Most of the critical exegesis of Joyce’s “Clay” reveals a great deal of dexterity on the part of the nearly dozen critics who have written on the popular story. Since Marvin Magalaner, in 1953, first suggested the dual level of symbolism (that of Maria as witch on the one hand and the Blessed Virgin on the other) the explications of the story have focused on the interlocking symbolic levels and have seen the story as Joyce’s attempt to handle apparently paradoxical symbolic elements simultaneously.1 This aspect of the story offers interesting opportunities for the interpreter to exhibit his perception of symbolic structures in a literary work, but with “Clay” the conclusions that have been drawn are a little short of absurd. The preoccupation with the symbolism has warped the usually perceptive Magalaner’s vision and, more seriously, led those who have followed him into a phantasmagoria which adds nothing to the story and seriously misinterprets it.2 As is so often the case with interpretations of Joyce’s work, Hugh Kenner, although he has been patently ignored by most Joyce critics, tells us what “Clay” is about: “Maria is ‘Clay’ as humanity itself, as susceptible to molding, and as death in life. Joe’s wife, another Mrs. Mooney, has eased her into the laundry and one may suspect will soon ease her into a convent; and Maria, one is sure, will never quite realize how she got there.”3 Let us start from the beginning—an unmarried, middle-aged woman named Maria works in the “Dublin by Lamplight” laundry and on All Hallows Eve she sets out to visit Joe Donnelly and his family. She takes the tram, stopping at a bakery for a slice of plumcake. On the second tram she